Project meetings

SAGE meetings

Dissemination Conference in Athens

[25-05-2022] The principal results and outputs of the project were shared at the final conference "Aging happily: Prevention against social exclusion of people 60+", which took place in Athens on May 12, 2022. It was organized by the Greek project partner KMOP. The conference was attended by many stakeholders, including representatives of municipalities, government organizations and citizens from the surrounding communities over the age of 65.

The local and regional authorities that participated in the events presented their initiatives and programs related to the issue of aging. On the part of our partnership, the final products and our experience from verification courses were the focus of our presentation. In addition, local senior folk singing and traditional dancing groups as well as members of a community painting group shared their art with the others. The meeting was very pleasant and fulfilling for the conference participants.

Final Management Meeting in Athens

athens_conf_dance [25-05-2022] The fifth management meeting of SAGE partnership in Athens on May 13, 2022 followed the successful second dissemination conference of the day before. It was the last management meeting and also the last common event of the project. The meeting focused on evaluation of the project implementation process. The bottom line is straightforward: All major goals of the project have been accomplished and all milestones have been met. This is not a small achievement when we consider the substantial measure of uncertainty we experienced in the past two years. The highest commitment of all SAGE consortium members is probably the primary reason for our results. The partnership members concluded the meeting with a notion that the project's topic deserves further development and cooperation.

Dissemination Conference in Livorno

[22-10-2021] The SAGE dissemination conference Learning in the Third Age: The Challenges of Erasmus+ took place on October 14, 2021 at the Natural History Museum of the Mediterranean in Livorno, Italy.The event, which was hosted by the Provincia di Livorno Sviluppo project partner, was among the first public events held after a prolonged shutdown of similar public activities in the city of Livorno and brought in over thirty guests from the interest groups and the general public. Among stakeholder entities represented at the conference we could find such organizations as Unitrè and Popular University of Rosignano, SPI CGIL, Auser Filo d’Argento of Livorno or United Ecosolidali Neighborhoods of Livorno.

Partners from the project consortium countries - Czech Republic, Greece, Iceland, Italy and Slovenia - brought their contributions to the conference to give a European perspective of the theme of learning in old age. Recognizing that learning should play a fundamental role in social participation and management of everyday life, SAGE partners presented their Silver Age Learning program designed to meet the challenge of training in the third age.The Silver Age Course is emphasizing the value of social networks, physical and intellectual exercise, personal development and cultural activities and promotes social life, personal well-being and autonomy as important elements for spending an active life even in the old age.

Project Management Meeting in Livorno

[25-10-2021] The fourth management meeting of SAGE partnership in Livorno on October 15, 2021 followed the successful dissemination conference event of the day before. It was, however, only the second management meeting when the members met face-to-face. The meeting started with evaluation of the conference and reflected on the positive feedback from the event's participants who expressed their appreciation of the Silver Age Course innovative concept. Nevertheless, verification and testing of the course, which will take place in each consortium member country, remained at the focus of our meeting. We discussed the outcomes from the joint staff training workshop for Silver Age Course trainers, held in Prague in September, status of preparations for the piloting courses, unified class documentation, course evaluation criteria, etc. Iceland member FAEC is the first one to start piloting classes in October and other members are going to join in November and/or December. Piloting classes are scheduled to be concluded by the end of January 2022.

Train-the-Trainer Workshop in Prague

[09-15-2021] The SAGE project entered its verification phase. During this phase each project partner will host a free-of-charge pilot training for seniors on the Silver Age course topics developed earlier. Results and feedback collected from the piloting classes will be used for finalizing the contents and teaching methods of the Silver Age course.

The verification phase of the project was kicked-off by the Train-the-Trainer workshop which took place in Prague from September 7 to September 9, 2021. This three-day intensive workshop/training was intended for trainers who will be involved in teaching Silver Age piloting classes. The general objective of the event was to build a common unified base for training methodology of the Silver Age course.

By the end of the workshop all nine hard-working participating trainers:

Understood the motivation for Silver Age course
Understood the course structure and innovative features
Were familiar with the course training tools, knew their purpose and were able to use them

Trainer factor is, of course, an element of utmost importance in every training. The positive outcomes of this training event give us confidence that outcomes and data collected from the piloting classes of the Silver Age course will be comparable and highly relevant, despite the fact they will be taken in the geographical area stretching from Iceland to Greece.

SAGE June online meeting The Celje meeting conducted online

[2021-1-26] The third partnership management meeting had been scheduled for January 2021 in Celje, Slovenia. Due to the travel limitations imposed by the ongoing covid-19 pandemic situation, our partnership met again online on January 22, 2021. The meeting focused on development of our intellectual products. We reviewed the progress of our common work on the course development and discussed the remaining open issues concerning the key outputs. We have every reason to believe that we will meet the milestone deadline of March 31, 2021, when the initial course release in the partnership's work language (of English) is due to be delivered. Following the milestone soon, initial phase of the course field testing will begin. We agreed on moving the date of the train-the-trainer workshop, which will conclude the initial field testing phase, from June to late August 2021.

The Reykjavík meeting was replaced by two online meetings

[2020-6-21] The second partnership management meeting had been planned for June 18 and 19, 2020 in Reykjavik, Iceland. However, because of the coronavirus pandemic, travelling to Iceland was not possible. Instead all partnership members met online on June 18. During our online conference we discussed and resolved a number of mostly organizational and management topics/issues. The partnership members also agreed to moving the meeting date to September 24 - 25.

[2020-9-25] However, due to the early autumn resurgence of the pandemic, the alternate meeting date did not materialize either. Therefore we met again online on September 24. This time our discussions focused mostly on product development. We evaluated the up-to-date results and set goals and guidelines for the future development of the course content. The next consortium meeting is scheduled for January 2021 in Celje, Slovenia.

The project kick-off meeting in Prague

SAGE KickOff Meeting [2019-10-28] The project coordinator ACZ Learning Center hosted the first transnational meeting of the SAGE consortium in Prague on October 24 and 25, 2019.

At the beginning of the initial meeting session participants reviewed the implementation plans, presented their organizations and debated development of planned outputs. Next partnership members discussed a detailed schedule of both the activities leading to preparation of our products and dissemination actions aimed at promoting our products. The initial meeting session concluded by reviewing organizational and financial management rules of the project implementation.

Next our meeting agenda focused on development of the first SAGE partnership output, which involves analysis of topics to be included in the new course as well as preparation of a detailed course description. After a thorough discussion the consortium members reached an agreement on the course topic selection methodology and on the structurer of the detailed course description. Before the meeting concluded deadlines for each step of the initial analytical phase of the project were set, up to the next transnational meeting to take place in June 2020.